Minnesota E-Democracy

Election '96

Campaign Finance Data - Search Help

Minnesota E-Democracy is proud to present this searchable database of Federal Election Commission data. If you have any questions about searching the database that are not answered here, please contact e-democracy@freenet.msp.mn.us.

Available search fields are:

Candidates
Search on who got the money (e.g. Barkley)

Campaign
Search by the specific campaign (house, senate, president, state, and district)

Committees
The committee that contributed the money (e.g. Education in name and Labor is SIG will give you the labor Political Action Committees with "Education" in their name--warning, there are a lot of them)
* Because of the way the data is set up, the Special Interest Group field
does not work if anything is in the candidate field.

Contributors/Contributions
The people who contributed. ("Occupation" is usually the business name.) 





Setting up your Search




All logic commands are "and."

For example, if you choose the options House, MN 
and 7 on the "Campaign" portion of the search form, you will get 
back the data for the Minnesota Seventh Congressional District. 

If you choose House, Any and 7 you 
will get data for all the Seventh Congressional 
Districts in the U.S.




Text fields work as a string search. 

For example, if you entered MEA on the "Committees" portion 
of the search form, you will get a list of all the meat 
producer PACs, not the Minnesota Education 
Association. 

If you leave a text field blank, it will be ignored.





Set field options (pull down menus- available 
options)

(Pull-down menus on this page are for demonstration only.)







Go to the Search 
Form.







Examples &  Searching Tips


This database contains information on constributions fitting any 
of the 
following criteria:




 All contributions over $200 to Minnesota candidates 
for:

 U.S. House 

 U.S. Senate 

 (money could have come from anywhere)

 * For example, with two searches you could find out how much 
money 
Senator Wellstone and former Senator Boschwitz have received from, say, 
California.




 All contributions over $200 from anyone or any campaign with 
a 
Minnesota address to any candidate in any state for:

 President

 U.S. House 

 U.S. Senate

 * For example, you can find out who in Minnesota gave money to 
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, or who in Minnesota gave money to 
Senator Kennedy in Massachusetts.




 All $200+ contributions to and from Minnesota Political 
Action Committees

 Please note that transfers between committees are supposed to be 
reported
by both committees and so may appear to be duplicated.




 The more criteria you select, the more usable your results 
will be.

 Because of the way the data is set up, the Special Interest Group 
field does not work if anything is in the candidate field.

 * For example, to find out how many contributions Dean Barkley 
has 
received from labor groups (the SIG blank), you should choose the "labor" 
option in the SIG field, and "Senate" and "Minnesota" in the Campaign 
field 
on the search form.







Go to the Introduction |
Go to the Search Form







Thanks to the following people for their help with this 
project:







Send comments to: 
e-democracy@freenet.msp.mn.us
	




[Back to 
Minnesota Town Hall 1996]


Updated October 18, 1996

http://www.e-democracy.org/help.html